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1 ETHNIC STRUCTURE, INEQUALITY AND GOVERNANCE OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR IN BELGIUM Kris DESCHOUWER January 2004 Part of UNRISD Project on Ethnic Structure, Inequality and Governance of the Public Sector. All unauthorized citation, duplication or distribution prohibited without the approval of UNRISD and the authors.

2 Table of Contents Introduction Historical background: the origins of the linguistic tensions The end of the national Belgian political parties : From a unitary to a federal state Consociational democracy in Belgium: the logic of the federal state The structure of the federal state The logic of the reform The position of language groups in Belgium Majorities and minorities The parliamentary representation The Belgian (federal) level Regions and Communities The local level The executives The federal level The Regions and the Communities The local level The Public Administration The Federal Level The level of regions and communities The local level Conclusion Bibliography... 37

3 Introduction Belgium is a divided country. A linguistic borderline between French and Dutch divide runs from west to east. Of course this is not enough to explain the fact that the language groups have engaged into a long lasting conflict. The main reason for that is the fact that in 1830 when Belgium was created as a new state the language of the people involved in politics was French. With a small majority of the population not speaking French but Dutch, this would gradually make the use of language a major political issue. Yet we need to say immediately that the conflict never became violent. Not one single shot has been fired in this ethno-linguistic conflict. It has been at the origin of many fierce debates, of governmental instability and of a major financial crisis (politicians being concerned with this ethnic conflict rather than with a sound financial policy). In the long however, the conflict between the long language groups was to a certain extent pacified. This was done by using the logic and technique of conflict management that had become fairly familiar to the Belgian political elites: consociational democracy. It is a technique of conflict avoidance. Conflict is avoided by granting a large degree of autonomy to the groups in conflict, and by obliging them to move together or not move at all for all matters that remain common. This consociational democracy led in this case to a deep reform of the Belgian state. The former unitary state became a federation of regions and of language communities. The Belgian federation is extreme in the degree of autonomy that it has given to the language groups, and its extremely complex in its attempts to provide checks and balances at all levels of political decision-making. In this report we will first go back in history, and explain how Belgium was created and how the tensions between the language groups gradually built up. Next we look at the political parties. We have to do so, because one of the striking features of Belgian politics is the falling apart of the Belgian parties into unilingual parties only participating in elections in their own part of the country. It reflects the deep divisions between the language groups, but at the same time it makes it very difficult to keep a legitimate and responsive democracy alive. In the third part of the report we present the federal reforms. We do so in some details, because the way in which the modern Belgian state is built reflects the way in which the language groups have been separated and yet still need still need to accommodate to each other. In the fourth and final part we further explain how ethnic minorities in Belgium are defined and protected. 1. Historical background: the origins of the linguistic tensions Two fairly old societal frontiers cut across Western Europe, more or less from north-west to south-east: a linguistic and a religious frontier. The first divides Europe roughly into the area that was linguistically influenced by the presence of the Roman Empire, and where varieties of Latin-type languages are spoken, and the area that escaped from that influence or was less thoroughly influenced 1

4 and where among others of course a variety of German-type languages are spoken. This language border starts today in the north-west of France, just south of the Belgian border, then enters Belgium and cuts it in two while passing just south of Brussels, before going down through the Alsace to Switzerland and to the north of Italy. The religious divide, reflecting the result of Reformation and contra-reformation, starts in the south of the Netherlands, and then proceeds to divide Germany and Switzerland. The two lines do not coincide, although they run sometimes close to each other. Belgium belongs to an area where they are close, yet exactly the fact that they do not coincide is an important part of the picture. Let us go back a few centuries first. When in 1648 the southern border of the Netherlands was fixed in the Treaty of Westphalia, it actually created a third division line, just in between the language borderline to its south and the religious borderline to its north (Andeweg & Irwin 1993). The modern state of the Netherlands was born, and that comes after a long war between the Dutch Calvinists and the Catholic Habsburgs. The new Dutch state, which had already been institutionalized before the Treaty, was clearly both a Protestant and a Dutch-speaking state. Especially the religious identity was more or less the raison-d'être of the Netherlands. Yet the state borderline does not follow the religious divide, but is situated south of it, creating thus a Catholic minority in the south of the Netherlands. Here is the origin of one of the major cleavages in modern Dutch politics. The language of the Netherlands was less problematic. It was Dutch, and would subsequently be further standardized. This little piece of history did not only fix the southern border of the Netherlands, it also defined the current northern border of Belgium. In 1648 the area south of the Netherlands was not yet called Belgium. But the separation will have farreaching consequences. One direct result of the liberation of the northern part of the former United Seventeen Provinces from the Catholic and Habsburgdominated south, will be a brain-drain of Dutch-speakers to the north and the non-standardization of the Dutch dialects spoken outside of the new political boundaries, i.e. in the current northern part of Belgium. South of the linguistic borderline, standardized French (from Paris) was becoming more important, without of course at that time eradicating the differences between the dialects spoken by the common people. In the course of the eighteenth century this French became even more important, as the language of the Enlightenment, of liberalism and modernity. French had become the language of the elites, of education and actually of court-life almost throughout Europe. That will of course become even stronger under the French rule of Napoleon, who conquered Belgium from the Austrian Habsburgs. French was now in the area that would become Belgium the language of the upper class, that is: the upper class both south and north of the linguistic border line. The French rule did not last very long. The Congress of Vienna rearranged the territorial organization of Europe and created the Low Countries, re-uniting more or less the former Seventeen Provinces, but then after centuries of separation and of different development. The political leadership of the Low Countries was given to the Dutch monarch William of Orange. Actually a number of Belgian 2

5 regions were added to the long existing Dutch state. And that Dutch state, as we said above, was clearly Dutch and Protestant. The union was not going to last very long. Three forces would quickly pull Belgium away from the northern Low Countries. The first was political liberalism. The Dutch monarchy was still fairly absolutist, and demands for a more responsible parliament were not met. The second force was religion. The Catholic Church did not like the Protestant domination of the north and of the monarchy, and saw the possibility to create a homogenous Roman Catholic State. And the third force was language. The Dutch state used Dutch, and wanted to impose this language on the southern provinces. Yet the upper classes there were Francophone, and did not at all appreciate this policy. And here we are at the beginning of the Belgian state. The date is This new state will be more liberal than the Low Countries, will be Catholic and will be Francophone. The Catholicism will be a real issue. The will to keep the country firmly controlled by the Church was not acceptable for the Liberals, and this Church-state cleavage will dominate Belgian politics until deep into the 20th century. The language to the contrary was not an issue. Belgium was at that time not seen as composed of two different language groups. It was just Francophone, in a natural but also deliberate way. The Constitution guaranteed the freedom of language, but that was meant to give the Belgian Francophones indeed the freedom to speak their own language, and not to be obliged to use the Dutch imposed on them in the Low Countries from which they seceded. Yet language will slowly but surely become an issue, and even a major one (Lorwin 1966; Zolberg, 1974; McRae 1986). Already before the creation of the Belgian state, a small movement existed that tried to promote the use of Dutch, and that resisted the too easy use of French in public life in the nonfrancophone part of the country. During the nineteenth century, thus during the early days of Belgium, a mainly urban and middle-class based group of intellectuals went on promoting this use of Dutch, tried to preserve the Dutch culture and actually started to claim the right to use that language in public life and in administrative matters. The newly born Flemish movement 1 defended a non-homogeneous view of Belgium. It stated that Belgium was bilingual, and that the use of the second language should at least be allowed and respected. It asked for some individual language rights for the population of the north. The Flemish Movement did not grow very fast. It started as a very marginal phenomenon, and grew into a larger and also more radical movement because of the fierce refusal of the Belgian Francophone elites to take its demands really into consideration. The marginality of the movement is also due to the fact that there was no real consensus about the nature of this second language. Dutch was a possibility, but also a problem. Dutch was the language of the Dutch state, and thus the language of the enemy. Dutch was also the language of Protestantism, which lead the Church to be rather reluctant in accepting it. 1. Actually the Flemish refers to the western part of what is today the northern region of Belgium. It used to be the County of Flanders. The name Flanders was gradually used to define all the Dutch-speaking parts of Belgium, and often the term Flemish is also used to refer to the Dutch spoken in Belgium. 3

6 Attempts were made to promote regional languages as the standard for the second language in Belgium. In the end the Flemish movement clearly opted for Dutch, but that then was a language which still to a large extent had to be learned by the population of the north. And the absence of a properly standardized language was a perfect argument for the Francophones to claim that French was already available as a standardized and universal language and that the learning of French would help the population of the north to get access to high culture. The idea that Dutch was going to be used for instance at universities was absolutely unthinkable. While the tension is building up during the nineteenth century, one issue within the language problem becomes very visible and very salient: the role and position of Brussels. The capital city of Belgium is situated close to the language border, but clearly north of it. As a city of government and administration, and as a city close to the francophone world it had already slightly been frenchified before the creation of Belgium. The choice of Brussels as Belgium s capital city will only increase the process. By the turn of the century the majority of its population speaks French. This is due to immigration from the south and to the rapid frenchification of the immigrants from the north, who needed French to function in the public administration and who wanted of course their children to be educated in the language of upward social mobility. Not only did Brussels become a francophone enclave in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, it also gradually grew and expanded, just like any other (capital) city. This expansion meant of course the expansion of the francophone enclave in Flanders. The pieces of a very difficult puzzle were being put on the Belgian table. The First World War is an important turning point. During the war it became utterly clear that the language issue could not be avoided any more now. Several elements contributed to that awareness. First there were the problems at the war front. Flemish soldiers had complained about the language situation, and they became conscious (and were mobilized to become conscious) of the fact that they were eventually expected to die for a country that did not even try to communicate with them in their own language. Flemish elites had tried during the war, i.e. during German occupation, to obtain the right to organize some classes at the University of Gent (in Flanders) in Dutch. They did succeed, but were of course accused of high treason, high treason that apparently was needed to obtain such an elementary right. But not only the language question sharpened during the war. The soldiers were of course lower class people, who had the right to fight for their country, but not the right to vote. Actually an imperfect system of universal male suffrage had been introduced in 1893, giving all men at least one vote, and granting a second or a third vote to the property owners, tax payers and better educated citizens. One of the first things to be realized after the war, was the introduction of full and equal male suffrage. But this would of course directly translate into the parliament the demographic situation of the country, in which almost 60% of the population lived in the non-francophone part. And with the language problem now clearly on the agenda, it would start producing real changes. 4

7 The most obvious and visible change that came about, was the territorialization of the issue (Murphy, 1998). Of course territory was part of the problem from the very beginning, but the Belgian elitist perception of the problem was not territorial. Once language laws are introduced, they would follow a territorial logic. The way to boost Dutch as a full and equal second language, without introducing Dutch as a new language in the south, was the division of the country in three linguistic regions: a Dutch-speaking north, a French-speaking south and the bilingual area of the capital city. Language laws passed in 1921 and in 1932 were clearly territorial, although they kept the possibility open for the language border to move, according to the languages effectively spoken at the local level. This was measured by organizing a language census every decade. The consequence of this was the further gradual loss of Flemish municipalities to the bilingual area of Brussels or straight to the francophone region. In 1963 the borderline would be finally fixed (see the map below). Figure 1: Map of Belgium with the borderline between the Dutch-speaking north and the French-speaking south. The Flemish movement came out of the First World War as a political and even party-political movement. The newly created Frontpartij referring thus to the war front wanted to see a reform of the Belgian unitary state into a decentralized and even federal state, which would grant the Flemish region the right to organize its cultural life itself. This now bipolar view of Belgium will soon lead to a new francophone perception of Belgium. They rather have the feeling that their Belgium is gone, that there are no Belgians any more, but only Flemings and Francophones. And among the Francophones, those living in Brussels are in a different position. They live in a former Dutch-speaking city 5

8 that is claimed by the Flemish movement as being still a part of Flanders. And they would therefore prefer not to be in Flanders. We have witnessed in this short overview of a long history the politicization of the language divide and its translation into a territorial definition of alternative solutions, with of course discussions about the exact boundaries of the territories. Belgium now contains four linguistic territories, one of which we left out so far for the sake of clarity. The first one is the Dutch-speaking area or the Flemish region. The second one is the region of Wallonia, which is francophone. Actually Wallonia includes also an area in the east which was transferred from Germany at the Treaty of Versailles in 1918, and where the population of course speaks German. It is today formally recognized as the German-speaking territory, but for regional matters (see below) it belongs to Wallonia. The fourth area is Brussels, the limits of which have been set and fixed in That region is bilingual. It is on the basis of this territorial division that the Belgian federal state will be built, but in a rather complex way, since the Francophones defend mainly a division in three regions, meaning that Brussels should be a separate region, while the Flemings defend then idea of a bipolar federation, based on the language groups, which means that Brussels belongs territorially to Flanders. Until now we have only discussed the language question as such, although we already pointed at the fact that its connection with the religious divide has played a significant role. Yet there is more than just language. The other cleavages in Belgian politics are strongly related to the language divide, not because of the language as such, but because of its territorial base. The different regions did not develop in the same way, and that makes them look different in more than just the language aspect. Flanders and Wallonia the two larger regions have more relevant differences, although it would take some time before they were perceived as such. Most obvious are the social and economic differences. A number of areas in what was to become Wallonia were the first in Europe to industrialize. The Flemish provinces remained for a long time mainly rural, except for some industry in the major cities (Gent, Antwerpen). In other words, in the 19 th century the economic centre of the country was concentrated in the Walloon industrial basins. Yet the financial centre of the country was located in Brussels since all the holdings, controlling the Walloon industry since the 1830s, had their seats there (Saey et.al. 1998). From the end of the 19 th century on, the old industrial centre in Wallonia gradually declined because (the harbour of) Antwerp and its hinterland attracted most of the investments in new economic sectors (Saey et.al. 1998). In 1901 coal was discovered in Flemish soil (Limburg) and coal mines emerged after World War I. (Witte et.al. 1990) By 1930 the seats of the major industries and financial institutions were concentrated in the Antwerp-Brussels-Clabecq axis, constituting the new economic centre. Rural areas in Flanders and Wallonia still formed the periphery while the old economic centre in Wallonia had been reduced to a semi-periphery, joined by newly or re-developing areas in Flanders and Wallonia. (Saey et.al. 1999) Many of these newly developing businesses in 6

9 Flanders were medium and small enterprises, in contrast to the large industrial factories of Wallonia. This gave rise to the creation of endogenous, mainly catholic, Flemish leading economic class whose interests did not coincide with the interests of the mainly liberal Francophone financial bourgeoisie (Witte et.al. 1940). The economic upheaval of Flemish areas and the decline of traditional Walloon industry boosted the Walloon movement (Kesteloot 1998). Despite the slow but steady improvement of Flanders' economy since the 1880s it was not until the sixties of the 20 th century that Flanders finally caught up with Wallonia. It was also only then that employment in the industrial sector would decline (Quévit 1978: ). Table 1: Evolution of the active population per region and per sector, (in percentage of the region) FLANDERS WALLONIA Agriculture Industry Services Agriculture Industry Services Source: Quevit 1978: 113 The loss of jobs in Wallonia was not compensated by a growth in the services sector though, resulting in high unemployment figures. Flanders on the other hand benefited largely from new (foreign) investments. In other words, the 1960s mark the definite turning point in the economic balance between Wallonia and Flanders. The consequence of a different societal and economic composition of the two regions is a very different party-political landscape, with a long domination of Christian-Democracy in Flanders and a domination of Socialism in Wallonia. The tables 2 and 3 below give the results for the elections for the Belgian national parliament since 1961, and shows the striking differences between the two regions. The results of the directly elected Flemish and Walloon parliaments in 1995 and 1999 show the same results as the national elections per region. Both regional elections coincided with the federal elections, and were actually dominated by it (Versmessen, 1995; Deschouwer, 2000). Flanders has been until very recently the home region of the Christian- Democrats. Until the early 1960s they controlled more than 50% of the Flemish vote. Even after a number of quite dramatic losses (especially 1965, 1968, 1981, 1991) they remained clearly the strongest party. From 1968 on the Belgian Christian-Democratic party split in two autonomous unilingual parties, which actually reinforced the power of the Christian Democrats in Flanders. It 7

10 became not only the largest party in Flanders, but also given the demographic weight of Flanders the largest party in Belgium. The Flemish Christian Democrats thus always governed (except for ) and as a rule provided the Belgian Prime Minister. When the Flemish Region/Community was given its own executive, it was always lead by a Christian-Democrat. In 1999 however, the Flemish Liberal party (an autonomous party after the split of the Belgian Liberals in 1971 see below) took the number one position in Flanders. Table 2. The electoral results (federal elections) in the region of Flanders since Christian Socialist Liberal Regionalist Green Extreme right Table 3. The electoral results in the region of Wallonia since Socialist Christian Liberal Communist Regionalist Green Extreme right After the First Word War and even more after 1945 the Flemish region thus starts to develop. The seaport of Antwerpen proves to be a very important asset. In general the Flemish economy is a mixture of a few large industries (chemical plants and automobile construction) and a large variety of smaller enterprises. The Walloon economy, which was much more large-scale industry, faces decline after 1945, just like the other old industrial regions in Europe. And towards the 1950s and 1960s the Flemish economy is clearly the most growing 8

11 and expanding. Flanders becomes the richer part of the country. The battle for the use of language has been fought and won, and now the Dutch-speaking region becomes the rich, dynamic, expanding one. These evolutions will obviously not reduce the tensions between the regions. These tensions become extremely important in the 1960s, and will then dominate the scene for more than three decades. These are the decades of the federal-type state reform, but also the decades during which the main political actors the political parties completely fell apart. And that is another element adding to the regionalist tensions. We will discuss the end of the parties in the following section. 2. The end of the national Belgian political parties The most spectacular and most relevant aspect of recent change in the Belgian parties is the death of the three traditional parties. Christian-Democrats, Liberals and Socialists were not able to survive the growing linguistic tensions, and within a time-span of only ten years, they all fell apart. The consequence of this change is the total absence now, and since 1978, of Belgian political parties, of parties defending the centre against the regionalist pulls. All parties are regional, and did not even keep a federal structure of co-operation (Deschouwer 1994a, 1994b, 1996). This falling apart of the parties did of course not happen all of a sudden. Actually the parties were more or less prepared for this, since they had been gradually taking into account in their internal structures the differences between the Dutch-speaking north, the French-speaking south and eventually also the bilingual Brussels region. Between the wars the Catholic Party then called the Catholic Bloc had already virtually fallen apart, functioning as a loose federation of a Flemish and a Francophone wing (Gerard, 1985; 1995). When the party was re-created as a modern Christian-Democratic party in 1945, it was again more united, but did explicitly take into account the existence of two wings, each having its own president, and each being formally recognized in the decision-making organs of the party. When in 1968 the question of the language status of the Leuven Catholic University came to the front, the party was confronted with a major internal crisis. This important Catholic University was located in the Dutch-speaking part of the country, and had like all Belgian universities been unilingual Francophone for a very long time. In 1968 the Dutch-speakers claimed that a university located in the Dutch-speaking or Flemish part of the country should be unilingual Dutch. The Francophones were forced to move out and to create the new university of Louvain-la-Neuve south of the linguistic borderline. The Christian-Democratic party did not survive this linguistic tension, and fell apart in two unilingual parties. Actually: the two wings of the party became independent and fully-fledged parties. In Brussels of course the split did hurt, since the local party sections had to be torn apart. Attempts to keep the party united in Brussels were a failure, since the language issues were of course especially salient in Brussels. The newly created Flemish CVP was a very large party, gathering at that time some 40% of the Flemish vote. The Francophone PSC was much smaller, both in absolute and in relative terms. 9

12 The PSC polled in 1968 just under 21% of the Francophone votes (details in table 2). Unlike the Christian-Democrats who accepted the existence of two wings from 1945 on, the Socialist party BSP-PSB always presented itself as a strong and unified party. The first acceptance of internal differences only came in A second difference with the Christian-Democrats, is the way in which the party fell apart, i.e. the number of wings into which it was divided. The Christian- Democrats were very strong in Flanders, and followed therefore the Flemish logic of a division in two wings along the language lines. The Socialist party however was very strong in the Francophone electorate, which is divided between the region of Wallonia and the Brussels region. Therefore the Socialists began to divide themselves in three wings along these regional lines. After the failure of one of the major plans to reform the Belgian state (the socalled Egmont pact in 1978), the party died. The Flemish wing went its own way as SP, and the Francophones went their own way as PS, divided however in a Brussels and a Walloon wing. The PS will always have to face this internal duality later on. Today it has not at all disappeared, since the regions, which were recognized in the party structure, are today the sub-states of the Belgian federation. The strength of the Liberal Party was more evenly spread than that of its major rivals, being medium-sized in Flanders and Wallonia, and rather strong in the smaller Brussels region. Unlike the two other parties, the Liberals did not formally recognize any linguistic or regional wings, taking care only of the equal representation of French and Dutch in the executive organs. In 1972 the Flemish wing went its own way, while the Francophones fell apart in a Brussels Liberal Party (still internally very divided) and a Walloon Liberal Party. Only in 1979 the Brussels and Walloon Liberals were united again in a new party called PRL. While regional parties replace the national parties, all the new parties are obviously regional. Parties of regional defence were obviously always confined to their own region: Volksunie in Flanders, Front Démocratique des Francophones in Brussels and the Walloon Rally in Wallonia. Parties that were created later will also be regional parties. In the early 1980s two Green parties are born, one for each part of the country: AGALEV in Flanders and ECOLO in the Francophone electorate. In 1978 the radical nationalists not accepting the participation of the more moderate Volksunie in the federal government created a new Flemish nationalist party. That party Vlaams Blok was not very successful, until it became in the early 1990s an extreme right-wing Populist Party, combining the radical Flemish nationalism with xenophobic and conservative ideas. In Flanders it reached its highest point in 2003, with 18% of the votes. There is a less successful right-wing Populist Party called Front National in Wallonia and in Brussels. It is more straightforwardly neo-fascist, but also badly organized. It polled 6% of the Walloon votes in The split of the parties and the subsequent creation of two units of the new parties have ended the life of the Belgian party system. First came the language problem, then its territorialization, and then the adaptation of the political parties 10

13 to the linguistic-regional divide. Each step reinforces the regional pluralism and makes it more difficult to contain. The expected and legitimate link between electoral result and government building, a link that can produce something like a Belgian party system at the governmental level, is problematic. It assumes (or hopes) that the electoral movements up or down of the members of the same ideological family are the same. Yet this is not the case. The parties in the two party systems move in different directions. To form a government that 'respects' the will of the voter, is a difficult exercise, and it is bound to go against the expectations of the public. The split of the parties and of the electoral party system has therefore in yet another way increased the tensions in Belgian politics: there is no direct electoral control and sanctioning of the central government. The system heavily loses legitimacy. Following up on this, one can indeed say that there is no real political centre in Belgian politics. Federal politics are conducted by regional parties, which also play a role at the regional level. There is no central public forum for political debates. There are two unilingual debates. Federal policy-making involves dealing with the different sensitivities of the parties in both sides of the country. The media will report on details of their own side, and refer to the other side as the single Flemish or Francophone position. The solution at the federal level will involve and will be interpreted as an agreement between the parties of the two sides. And that is what we mean when we say that there is no centre: the centre is always where the other is. Federal politics looks very much like inter-regional politics and are obviously conducted or opposed by regional parties : From a unitary to a federal state 3.1. Consociational democracy in Belgium: the logic of the federal state As we already said, the tensions between the speakers of two different languages are not the only tensions that have coloured the Belgian political life. Actually the ethno-linguistic cleavage can be seen as the third one. The first is the religious divide (Church versus State) and the second the social and economic divide (labour versus capital). In order to understand why the ethnolinguistic tensions were settled in the way they were, we need to give a bit more information about the techniques used to pacify the others. That is especially important if Belgium is compared to other countries. Other countries might have ethno-linguistic divisions that are similar to those in Belgium, but those in Belgium have occurred and have become very salient in a political culture and for political elites that had already quite some experience in problem-solving. Belgium has slowly built up very developed skills of the typical consociational decision-making (Lijphart 1969, 1981; Huyse 1971; Deschouwer 2002). At the end of the First World War it was very clear that a rather explosive cocktail of problems was making its way to the political agenda. Both the socialeconomic and the linguistic tensions needed to be taken into account, in order to avoid serious destabilization and loss of legitimacy of the Belgian political 11

14 system. The awareness of the danger brought the leaders of the three major political forces - Catholics, Socialists and Liberals - together, on the initiative of King Albert, and they decided in consensus to introduce universal (male) suffrage at once, even if the Constitution at that time did not yet allow for this change of the electoral law. This Pact of Loppem of 1918, referring to the location of the King s castle where the agreement was reached can be considered as the starting point of Belgian consociationalism. Yet one cannot say that the logic of elite accommodation got immediately spread all over the system. This was actually one single, yet important agreement, to reduce the tensions at that time. If we want to assess the degree in which the consociational logic and practices were present in these early days, we can look in the first place at the composition of the Government. Before the War and especially before the turn of the century, the two-party system and the majoritarian electoral technique had produced one-party governments. An important change in this respect is the enlargement of the Government during the War. At the beginning of the War a Catholic-Liberal coalition was in power, but in 1917 a representative of the Socialist Party was invited to join the team. That produced an all-party grand coalition, of course inspired by the external pressure of the war. But the change is significant, because the grand coalition did more than just manage the War period. After the War the principle of keeping the three major ideological families together for major decisions was continued, among others in the already mentioned Pact of Loppem. And the grand coalition itself was continued formally until late In the following 15 years, there was only a very short period of grand coalition (18 months in ). Much more significant however is the fact that the Socialist party had certainly not yet become a real full partner. The Catholic party governed all the time, but always in a coalition with the Liberals. There is only one exception: a Catholic-Socialist coalition of 11 months in , followed then by a short period of grand coalition. One can therefore not say that the consociational logic, in which all the relevant partners have a permanent status of full partner, was completely developed during the Interbellum. Of course the composition of government coalitions is only one indicator, but it is a significant one, and it surely translates here the limited extent to which the Socialist Party and its eventual auxiliary organizations were treated as full third partners. The grand coalition of the First World War was a typical crisis management phenomenon. The War itself and the potential instability of the post-war period made the elites accept the idea that co-operation might be profitable to all. But as soon as the crisis period was over, the political system went back to normal as far as the dominating role of Catholics and Liberals is concerned. It entered actually a new situation, in the sense that now a third party was present, but mostly not incorporated. Yet in the second half of the 1930s things begin to change. We are again looking at a crisis phenomenon. The economic conditions are bad, unemployment is rising and the Belgian Frank has to be devaluated. In

15 therefore, one week after the devaluation of the currency, a new grand coalition is formed. It is continued after the elections of 1936 and formally until The occupation by the German forces and the way in which the resistance to it was organized, will have clear effects on the post-war politics in Belgium. Especially the social and economic policy could rely on a fairly large consensus between representatives of workers and employers. The immediate post-war period allowed for a rapid economic reconstruction, for the building of solid foundations of a modern social security and for the development of the organized permanent negotiation between workers and employers, i.e. for the development of a well-oiled neo-corporatist circuit of decision-making. These are all indicators of a fairly consensus-oriented attitude and of consensusoriented procedures and institutions (Luyten, 1995), at least as far as this particular cleavage is concerned. Yet the post-war politics were at the same time very competitive indeed. The period between 1945 and 1958 is very difficult to label in terms of the consociational logic. Except for the social-economic cleavage, the Belgian system seems to function in a quite majoritarian way. Yet exactly these majoritarian strategies led to such political tensions that the only way to cool them down was relying on classical consociational strategies. This point is also stressed by Seiler (1997) who states that Belgium is an exemplary case of consociationalism, but then also asserts that it displays quite some French or southern characteristics, with strong ideological competition and a majoritarian logic (see also Frognier, 1988). One can even say that consociationalism comes in waves, pacifies only one problem at a time, leaving open the competition on the others. After the Second World War the social and economic cleavage was pacified and transferred to a large extent to the corporatist arena. Then came the troubles called the King s Question, then the school war and finally the linguistic-regionalist tensions. Each one is taken into the consociational logic when, after a period of strong mobilization, the tensions are so high that pacification is needed. The King s Question offers a very nice illustration of this. The starting point is a conflict between the Government and King Leopold III in May 1940 on how to proceed with the War. The King remains in Belgium, while the Government goes to London. After the War, since the King has been taken to Austria by the German troops, his brother takes temporarily his place. Very soon the question whether the King can return becomes very salient and dominant. The Catholic Party defends his return, while other political forces want him to resign. The Catholic Party wins a majority of the seats in 1950, and also organizes a referendum on the question whether the King should return. The result of the referendum is a clear 57% of the voters saying yes, but only the Dutchspeaking population had clearly said yes, while among Francophones the no vote was larger. The King did return, but after riots had started in the south of the country, the leaders of the three major political parties sat together and convinced Leopold to resign. The Catholic and Dutch-speaking majority was thus not used to fight to the very end and to win the battle. 13

16 At the elections of 1954 the Christian-Democratic majority was beaten, and a coalition of Liberals and Socialists took over. Here we are again in a purely majoritarian logic. There were not too many issues on which Liberals and Socialists agreed, but one of them was the school issue, and of course the will to remove the Christian-Democrats from office. The leftist government tried hard to propose and implement a number of laws promoting the secular staterun secondary education and harming the Catholic schools. Yet the Catholic world and of course also the Christian-Democratic party mobilized strongly against the governmental plans. The strength of this protest finally led to the ending of the conflict in a very classical consociational way: in 1958 the three traditional parties signed the School Pact. It settled the conflict by granting basically the two school systems more or less the same rights and financial means. And that basically pacified the old Church-state cleavage in Belgium (Tyssens, 1997). With the labor-capital cleavage being pacified in the corporatist logic, only the regional-linguistic issue remained salient. Precisely that issue will then dominate Belgian politics in the sixties and the seventies. And it will be solved in the consociational way. The first constitutional reform of 1970 (see more details below) already built in the obligation to go further by using consensual techniques. Indeed, the 1970 Constitution introduced for instance the obligation to have an equal number of French-speaking and Dutch-speaking Ministers in the Government. It also introduced the principle of the double majority for all further institutional reforms and for all laws implementing institutional reforms. The threshold for future reforms was thus fairly high. That has certainly slowed down the further implementation of the reforms, but on the other hand it also helped to find solutions. The thresholds being so high, there were many attempts to continue with the reforms, but many attempts also failed. That meant that after a few years there were a lot of unsolved problems and tensions, leading once in a while to a very deep crisis. These crises usually occurred when new governments had to be formed. Like we explained above, most governments since the 1960s collapsed because of the linguistic divide. But after the governmental crisis a new government has to be formed, and it needs to be formed by parties of both sides. When things really became troublesome, the risk for a total deadlock of the political system actually helped to produce the awareness that a solution had to be found. And then a solution was found indeed. We are looking again at the Belgian crisis consociationalism. The major actors in this process were of course the political parties (Deschouwer, 1999a). Problems always had to be faced at the level of the central government, which could not avoid being cut in two by the linguistic divide (for a more detailed account of this mechanism: Deschouwer, 1994b; 1996). So either the parties had to negotiate in order to keep the government alive, or they had to negotiate to form a new one. Two (or four) parties were much more active in this process, because of their size and because of their position in their respective regions: Christian-Democrats and Socialists. An agreement in 1963 on the fixing of the linguistic borderline was produced by a 14

17 center-left government. The reform of 1970 was also realized by a center-left coalition, led by Gaston Eyskens who had already settled the Royal Question in 1950 and the school issue in A major reform plan (which finally failed) was presented in 1977 by a center-left coalition. In 1980 the Liberals joined the Government for just 5 months, which helped to find the majorities for a second constitutional reform. In 1988 a further constitutional reform was realized, again by a center-left government in which the Volksunie this time helped to provide the qualified majorities. In 1993 another constitutional reform was once more the work of a center-left government. The Belgian federation is a fairly extreme kind of federation. The federal level has been almost completely emptied, and most of the powers have been given to the linguistic Communities and to the Regions. That is a clear result of the double party system. All the parties are regional parties. They only represent one part of the country and only compete with the parties of their own language. This produces a very centrifugal competition, because there simply is nobody to defend the center. All parties want, in varying degrees, more autonomy for their region and/or community. The separated electoral competition unites the parties on each side, and creates a huge cleavage between the two sides. And then these same parties have to bridge the gap when they form a Belgian coalition government. The way to do that is by using the consociational logic: waiting until there are a lot of problems to be solved, and then produce an agreement which means essentially that the non-agreement is institutionalized by letting both sides deal with their own policy. In the consociational language this is granting autonomy, and that is exactly what is done in a federal state. The solution produced by the consociational crisis management was then a consociational federal state, full of checks and balances, power sharing and veto powers. The granting of autonomy that was just discussed is probably the most obvious feature. But there is more. We already mentioned the constitutional obligation to share power in the federal government. There is either no government, or a government in which parties of both sides have reached an agreement and govern together. The logic of decision-making in the federal government is consensus, which means that both sides have a veto power. This is much more important than the rather symbolic obligation to have an equal number of ministers for each language group. At the level of the Parliament, there is also a veto power. When one linguistic group declares that a proposal is probably going to harm them as a linguistic group, it can activate the so-called alarm bell (see below). This guarantee for the minority together with equal number of ministers and consensus decisionmaking Is also present in the Brussels Region, but then to protect the Dutchspeaking minority in that region. Conflicts over distribution of powers or so-called conflicts of competence are settled in a judicial way. If a conflict over distribution of powers is signaled after a law, decree or ordinance has been issued, it is settled by the Court of Arbitration. This Court is composed of 12 judges, 6 Dutch-speaking and 6 15

18 French-speaking, all appointed by the Federal government, on proposal of the Senate. Half of the judges are former politicians, and half of them belong to the judicial profession. Conflicts of interest, i.e. conflicts involving lack of agreement on the substance of laws, decrees or ordinances, are more problematic, since they need a political solution, in an institutional setting which is complex, full of subtle equilibrium and full of potentially diverging interpretations. The conflicts here are likely to occur between the two language groups, and will then in practice have to be solved by an agreement between them. In order to deal officially with conflicts of interest, the Concertation Committee was created. It is composed of the federal Prime Minister, five ministers of the federal government and six members of the governments of regions and communities. It also needs to be perfectly linguistically balanced. Either the federal government or the government of one of the federated entities can signal a potential conflict to the Committee. This move suspends the debated decision during sixty days. During that time the Committee can try to find a solution by consensus. If this is not found after sixty days, the suspension is lifted and the conflict remains unsolved. This Concertation Committee is only the official way to deal with these problems. It is rarely used. In practice the prevention of conflicts is dealt with by the party presidents of the governing parties, who meet regularly with the Prime Minister. The absence of federal parties in Belgium obliges indeed the parties to be active at two levels (the same party governs at the regional and at the federal level), and obliges them to contain the potential conflicts between the levels amongst them. Other institutions for a more permanent concertation and cooperation are not available, since the fairly exclusive competencies do not imply (at first sight) a great need for this cooperation. The system however does generate tensions concerning the interpretation of the rules and their eventual further reform. In the absence of good institutions for discussing them, they are stocked until there is enough (i.e. until the system blocks) for a general and broad round of negotiations. The formation of a new federal coalition government is mostly the time to do that, and to produce one further step in the reform of the state. In the following paragraphs we add some details about the structure of the Belgian federation like it functions today. After that we will deal more systematically with the impressive number of devices meant to avoid the use of majorities, to guarantee the right of minorities and to force political elites to reach consensus The structure of the federal state The actual federal state came about in five major stages, over more than thirty years of conflict, tension and subtle conflict management (see also Covell, 1993). It is no use here to go into the details of each phase, and into the details of the many failed attempts to get out of the deadlock. The following is thus a 16

19 very general overview, and looks more logical and smooth than the full story of conflicts and failures. The first step was 1963, when the language border was fixed. That is important, because it confirms the territorialization of the problem and will allow later for the mainly yet only partially territorial solution. The agreement of 1963 states that the borderline will not move any more, i.e. the logic of constantly refixing it on the basis of the language census is abandoned. Thus three territories have now fixed boundaries, which is especially important for Brussels, which will not be able to expand any more. In a number of localities where the last census of 1947 had revealed a minority of at least 30% speakers of the language other than the official one for the region, the inhabitants received socalled facilities, allowing them to use their language in their individual contacts with the public authorities. That is especially important for the area around Brussels, which in the old logic would have become an integral part of the bilingual area. After 1963 this periphery is henceforth clearly, and definitively, in Flanders, be it with language facilities for the Francophones in some localities. The next step is the reform of the Constitution is This reform formally recognizes the existence of the communities and the regions, and it gives them their territory. The three regions obviously coincide with the three linguistic areas fixed in The Flemish community consists of the Dutch-speaking Region and the Dutch-speakers in the bilingual Region of Brussels, while the French community consists of the Francophone (Walloon) Region (not the German speakers) and the Francophones of Brussels. As for the German community, is it located in the Francophone area, but it is granted language facilities. During the 1970s many attempts to translate these principles into working institutions failed, because of divergent interpretations of this logic, and of course the prevalence given by one group (the Flemish) to the communities, and by the other (the Francophones) to the regions. In 1980 a second round of constitutional reforms introduces a real devolution of competencies. For the regions of Flanders and Wallonia, and for the three language communities, institutions are set up. For Brussels however there was no solution, and that Region did not receive its autonomy yet. The institutions consist of parliamentary councils, composed of the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, elected in one of the regions. For those elected in the bilingual area 2, the first language in which they take their oath defines their linguistic identity and defines in which Community council they can sit. These councils have an executive, but they do not elect it (technically the regional and community ministers belong to the Belgian government). In other words, community and regional parliamentarians are central parliamentarians, sitting for certain purposes in linguistically divided assemblies, and the regional and community executives are sub-groups of the central executive (the term federal had not emerged yet). 2. That area is larger than the Brussels region, because there is an electoral constituency (Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde) which includes Brussels and a part of Flemish territory, and where Francophone parties thus are present at the polls 17

20 At this point, the Flemish institutions are merged, in the sense that there is one single council and one single executive, taking care of both the competencies of the Region of Flanders and the competencies of the Flemish Community. Flanders wanted indeed to be a Community in the first place, and did not ask for the regional logic. At the Francophone side two sets of institutions are built, one for the Walloon Region and one for the French community. Again, this difference in structure continues to this day. The next step forward is 1988, when constitutional reforms gave Brussels its regional institutions, which also arrange the way in which both the Flemish and the French Community can be present in Brussels. This is organized through awkwardly named institutions called the French Community commission (or COCOF as it is commonly called), the Flemish Community commission (VGC) and the common Community commission (COCOM / GGC). The COCOF is a real and fully-fledged legislative body. The Flemish Community Commission VGC is not a legislative body, since decisions on Flemish Community issues are decided by the regular Flemish institutions and merely implemented in Brussels by the VGC. As for the common Community Commission COCOM, it deals with community issues relevant to both linguistic communities, such as bilingual hospitals for instance. The reform of 1988 also transfers new competencies to the regions and the competence over education to the communities, which is a very important step. The councils now elect region and community executives, but the councils themselves are - except for Brussels - not (yet) directly elected. In 1993, the institutions are changed again, and the Constitution now formally declares Belgium to be a federal country. The major change here is the direct election of the councils of the regions and the reform of the Senate into a house of the Communities (not Regions). The central province of Brabant is also split in the provinces of Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant, the provincial competencies being taken over by the regional authorities in the Region of Brussels. The 1993 reform also permits the transfer of powers from the French Community to the Walloon Region and the COCOF, which will be done in the areas of manpower training, aspects of health care policy, education and policies towards handicapped people, to name a few. This transfer occurred in It did not happen at the Flemish side, because there is no need and especially no demand to do so. The Flemish institutions simply stick to the fusion of Region and Community and to the direct incorporation of the Brussels Flemish population into the Flemish Community as a whole. The 1993 changes are the last major constitutional reforms so far. But the process of reform goes on, since competencies are further gradually devolved from the federal state to the regions and communities The logic of the reform At first sight the double character of the federation may seem awkward, because it involves a double distribution of competencies. Yet there is a very easy logic behind it, in the sense that competencies related to individuals 18

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